APPLICATION OF ADVANCED COMPUTER RESOURCES TO PLASMA PHYSICS CODES

AT PRESENT, COMPUTERS ARE AVAILABLE WITH ENORMOUS QUANTITIES OF CORE STORAGE AND EXTREMELY FAST COMPUTATIONAL CAPABILITIES AS COMPARED WITH COMPUTERS JUST A FEW YEARS OLD. IN THE NEXT YEAR OR TWO, EVEN MORE DRAMATIC INCREASES IN MEMORY AND COMPUTATIONAL SPEED WILL BECOME AVAILABLE. OF IMPORTANCE TO DNA/RAAE IS THE FACT THAT THESE NEW COMPUTERS WILL ALLOW THE CALCULATION OF HIGH ALTITUDE NUCLEAR WEAPONS EFFECTS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY INADEQUATELY TREATED DUE TO THE INHERENT APPROXIMATIONS AND SIMPLIFICATIONS CONTAINED IN EXISTING COMPUTER CODES. THE PROPOSED RESEARCH WILL RESULT IN AN IMPROVED TREATMENT OF EARLYTIME PHENOMENOLOGY FOLLOWING MEGATON BURSTS AT ABOUT 200 KM ALTITUDE WHICH NEEDS TO BE TREATED IN A FIRST-PRINCIPLES CODE AND WHICH CAN BE INCLUDED IN A CODE SPECIFICALLY ORGANIZED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CORE SIZE AND CPU SPEED WHICH IS AVAILABLE IN TODAY'S STATE-OF-THE-ART COMPUTERS. THE PROPOSED TECHNICAL APPROACH IS TO REVIEW THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVANCED COMPUTER HARDWARE, REVIEW RELEVANT PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY AND FORMULATE MODELS FOR IMPLEMENTATION ON A CANDIDATE COMPUTER, AND FORMULATE A PLASMA PHYSICS CODE ARCHITECTURE.